1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for displaying a residual amount of a battery in a portable terminal. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for displaying a status of a battery by compensating for a voltage drop in accordance with a current consumption.
2. Description of the Related Art
A portable terminal has a limited battery resource for easy portability. According to the limited battery resource, the portable terminal displays a status of a battery to a display unit by determining the status of the battery, i.e., the portable terminal determines the status of the battery as illustrated in FIG. 1 below.
FIG. 1 illustrates a block diagram for determining a voltage of a battery in a portable terminal according to a conventional art.
Referring to FIG. 1, the portable terminal comprises a battery 100, an internal circuit 110, and a voltage determination unit 120.
The battery 100 provides current for operating of the internal circuit 110 of the portable terminal. The internal circuit 110 operates through the current provided by the battery 100. The voltage determination unit 120 determines a voltage of the battery 100.
The portable terminal displays the voltage of the battery 100 determined by the voltage determination unit 120 to a display unit.
As set forth above, the portable terminal determines the voltage of the battery 100 by using the voltage determination unit 120. In this case, the voltage determined by the voltage determination unit 120 may be lower than an actual residual amount of the battery 100 due to current consumption resulting from the use of supplementary functions in the internal circuit 110.
To address this problem, the portable terminal compensates for the voltage determined by the voltage determination unit 120 using a voltage drop corresponding to execution of each supplementary function. Thus, the portable terminal needs to determine the voltage drop according to execution of each supplementary function in advance and save the voltage drop information.
However, even if the same supplementary function is executed in the portable terminal, each current consumption for the supplementary function varies according to the environment in which the supplementary function is being used so that the portable terminal may not precisely compensate for the voltage determined by the voltage determination unit 120.
In this case, the portable terminal may determine that the status of the battery 100 is insufficient so that the portable terminal may cut the power even through the residual amount of the battery 100 is enough.